Web Portfolio Bootcamp

WYSIWYG

These types of web development tools do all the technical work for you. They tend to have a limited set of designs or ways to layout your web portfolio, but will take you through the process of putting your portfolio together step by step. These tools can be great to get your portfolio out there quickly and without having to worry about the technical aspects. And many of these programs will give you a highly professional, albeit not always unique, look.

Weebly is quickly becoming a popular tool for website creation. It's a completely online tool, so will work with Mac, Windows, or any system with a web browser. When you sign up to create a site on Weebly, you are walked through the creation process step-by-step. I used this with my own high school English students, and they were surprised and excited by how easy and fun website creation became when they used this tool. There is also a developer version of Weebly which allows more sophisticated web designers to build a site and put it into the Weebly Content Management System (CMS). I'll talk more about what a CMS can do later.

There is also software in this field that is designed to install on your computer. WebPlus(for Windows) and Sandvox (for Mac) are two great examples of fully WSYWIG tools that install on your computer. These tools offer slightly more flexibility that Weebly because they can be exported and installed to your own domain or to a disk to be viewed locally. However, the convenience of a web-based tool--preventing the need to deal with loading your site to a server and having access wherever you go--are quickly replacing locally installed software in this category.

Some of fully WSYWIG portfolio tools, like Behance, will also give you direct connection to social networking. Such tools often fit into even more rigid design structures, but offer you the opportunity to network and integrate them more fully with your online presence. I use my Behance portfolio to link some of my work samples directly to my LinkedIn profile page. When people visit my profile on LinkedIn, they are immediately confronted with engaging portfolio samples.